What do you guys think of my hardware/software setup?

[swamptherion]

Hello.

Well, actually, right now my only gear is a damn USB microphone, so...

First of all, my remixes will be in the style of symphonic and power metal with synths.

I'm planning to mic my guitar amp, I'll use Cubase 5 for that; and I'll use Finale 2011 for all my composition (orchestration, arranging, strings, etc.) and then import into Cubase 5 with VST or something... I don't get that "piano roll" thing in DAWs, there's nothing like standard musical notation for complex stuff.

Then I'll do the drums and probably bass with EZdrummer or similar/better.

Any suggestions?, a better way to do what I'm planning to do?, should I use X piece of software instead of Y? ...FL Studio?

btw, no, right now I can't afford a keyboard nor better gear...

Thanks in advance!

[Nabeel Ansari]

I don't get that "piano roll" thing in DAWs, there's nothing like standard musical notation for complex stuff.

Piano roll is generally much faster to write in (electronically, not by hand. If by hand, sheet music is faster) when you're doing complex stuff (and humanizing, a straight MIDI import from Finale to Cubase will just have your performance sound inhuman). I would only write in sheet music if you plan it to be read by human eyes.

Just my two cents, I realize sheet music is more traditional and accepted to be how you "write music" but for computer music, getting comfortable with either midi input by midi keyboard or by mouse is the way to go.

I don't suggest by mouse unless you're using FL Studio. It's the easiest piano roll to get comfortable with right off the bat. (no keyboard shortcuts to get used to, just click to place and right click to erase. Notice, that isn't a right click menu, but actually clicking the note with the right mouse button will make it gone)

However, the more popular method is to input by MIDI keyboard. If you can't play piano, your mouse is the way to go. <3

And just to clarify, there's no real "better" way. It's how you want to work and what suits you best.

[eilios]

If you think of a piano roll in sheet music everything makes a buttload of sense. 4 notes in 1 measure in 4/4 time is the same as quarter notes, and adjusting the length lets you change how staccato/legato they are.

[Dissidia]

FL piano roll = lurv.

[Moseph]

Speaking as someone who's really good with both Finale and a piano roll ...

Learn to use the piano roll. You can write faster, you can fine-tune the performance to fit the samples better than in Finale, you don't have to waste time exporting/importing from Finale, and DAW playback is more flexible than Finale's. Also, complex stuff is easier to do in a piano roll rather than in notation.

It's just a matter of getting used to how things look on the piano roll after reading sheet music for so long.

[Rozovian]

You'll probably have to work with humanizing anything you don't record, and that's easier in the piano roll. For writing, whatever you're used to will be the fastest.

Cubase should work just fine. You'll just spend time learning a new daw instead of making music if you switch. Playing with a second daw is useful, but entirely switching and expecting it to work better than the one you know best... Well, it won't.

I don't see any symphonic plugins listed. Those, alobg with making ezdrummer sound good for metal, will probably be your biggest problems. Probably.

[swamptherion]

Thank you all for replying. I didn't replied before 'cause I went out right after I posted this thread.

I would only write in sheet music if you plan it to be read by human eyes.

That's my plan, actually; I'm writing a score with a lot of instruments and I want to save it as musical notation with modern musical symbols, not as piano roll with red and green squares... what if I forget the notes and want to perform it live sometime in the future? I think it would be easier if I just read the sheet instead of figuring out the notes by looking at the DAWs keyboard. I mean, you wouldn't play Ponce's Thème varié et Finale reading a piano roll instead of the actual sheet, right?

The dilemma here is that, as you said, I don't want my performance to sound inhuman... I guess I'll do everything once, first in Finale to actually keep it as sheet music for the future, and then in Cubase or FL Studio for humanizing and using virtual instruments.

4 notes in 1 measure in 4/4 time is the same as quarter notes, and adjusting the length lets you change how staccato/legato they are.

Well, I guess that's kinda obvious (no offense). I just don't get how can I write much more complex rhythms in a piano roll, like pickups, syncopation, tuplets, grace notes, etc. Anyone care to explain it to me?

Also, complex stuff is easier to do in a piano roll rather than in notation.

How's that?

It's just a matter of getting used to how things look on the piano roll after reading sheet music for so long.

Truth is I've never sat down and tried to figure it out by myself. I'll try to write some passages with FL Studio's piano roll and just get used to it...

Thanks again

[swamptherion]

Thanks, Rozovian, great advise!

Any plugins you recommend? I guess a symphonic suite will do for now.

I thought EZdrummer Drums from Hell or something like that was great for metal... I heard that it was used to create all the drums in one of Meshuggah's albums.

[Tensei]

The reason a piano roll is more suited for electronic music than sheet music notation is because it gives you control of velocities (which are different from dynamics, mind you) and other midi data that is required to have a sampled instrument play a realistic performance.

Finale really only is a notation tool, because afaik there are no string libraries that can accurately interpret musical notation to the same degree as a piano roll and midi controls. Like, if you have a violin part written that starts off as legato, then tells a player to play a few notes staccato, an actual violin player will interpret that accurately, but most sample libraries would have to load up an entirely different sample set of staccato samples.

It's not really worth it to write in finale if your primary goal is to get it to sound good through samples because the more complex notation won't translate accurately to samples anyway.

[ambinate]

to be honest, if you're used to writing things out in standard notation, i think it's probably worth it to do what you already had planned to - write it out in Finale or something and then import it into your DAW. it won't sound good coming straight off the import, as you'll have to spend time in the piano roll getting the performances humanized with velocity edits and all that, but i think it makes more sense to do that than to try and write the score afterward. i don't know cubase at all - does it have a score editor? i know some DAWs do, so if that's the case, you might be able to do everything in one program.

while everyone saying that the piano roll offers more flexibility for performance and all that are definitely telling the truth, if you're already comfortable thinking and writing in standard notation - and it's easier for you to get your ideas down that way (which is the most important thing) - i think your original plan makes the most sense as long as you're ready for a big time investment.

as far as EZ drummer goes - you're right! drumkit from hell was used for all the drum parts on meshuggah's catch 33. however, getting it to sound great right out of the box isn't easy, which is probably what rozovian was referring to (i think?). it takes a lot of work to get sampled acoustic drums like that to sound natural and not stiff. as long as you're ready for some growing pains with it, i think it should work out.

[Nabeel Ansari]

Well, I guess that's kinda obvious (no offense). I just don't get how can I write much more complex rhythms in a piano roll, like pickups, syncopation, tuplets, grace notes, etc. Anyone care to explain it to me?

From a (solely) computer musician's perspective with no actual musical training/lessons I can say that I have no idea how doing that stuff on sheet music is easier; it's all about reading symbols while in a piano roll the position and length give you a pretty good idea.

The piano roll lets you fine tune the EXACT (exact exact exact) behavior of the notes. So writing in sheet music and then exporting as MIDI for someone who already writes in sheet music is a GREAT IDEA. (except for reasons Tensei has stated, not everything in notation can be translated value by value into MIDI)

Also, piano roll isn't meant for humans to read/perform off of, it's meant to write music the way a sampler or soundbank can understand it. In sheet music, you have to define a bunch of parameters (time signature, key signature) while for computers they can literally just receive the note pitch value and its velocity and send a signal to trigger a sound. They don't have to understand the music to perform it well like we do.

[ambinate]

From a (solely) computer musician's perspective with no actual musical training/lessons I can say that I have no idea how doing that stuff on sheet music is easier; it's all about reading symbols while in a piano roll the position and length give you a pretty good idea.

it's all about what you're comfortable with. i know people who can sight read super complex stuff in standard notation with almost 100% accuracy but wouldn't know what the hell to do with a piano roll and a few hours. obviously, it's something you have to learn how to use if you're making music on a computer, but if the best way for you to get ideas down is by writing it out in a score, then that's the best way to go. i use the piano roll all the time, but i'll sometimes write out sketches of chord progressions or basic melodies in logic's score editor just because i've gotten used to thinking that way. it's not the fastest way of working, but it can be helpful for me.

[Nabeel Ansari]

it's all about what you're comfortable with. i know people who can sight read super complex stuff in standard notation with almost 100% accuracy but wouldn't know what the hell to do with a piano roll and a few hours. obviously, it's something you have to learn how to use if you're making music on a computer, but if the best way for you to get ideas down is by writing it out in a score, then that's the best way to go. i use the piano roll all the time, but i'll sometimes write out sketches of chord progressions or basic melodies in logic's score editor just because i've gotten used to thinking that way. it's not the fastest way of working, but it can be helpful for me.

Well that's what I was saying, it was from MY perspective as someone who never used sheet music before.

[eilios]

The piano roll lets you fine tune the EXACT (exact exact exact) behavior of the notes. So writing in sheet music and then exporting as MIDI for someone who already writes in sheet music is a GREAT IDEA.

Also, piano roll isn't meant for humans to read/perform off of, it's meant to write music the way a sampler or soundbank can understand it. In sheet music, you have to define a bunch of parameters (time signature, key signature) while for computers they can literally just receive the note pitch value and its velocity and send a signal to trigger a sound. They don't have to understand the music to perform it well like we do.

As someone who has both musical training/lessons and someone who almost solely composes on FL, I can say that this is silly()!!! Time signature and key signature are both present in FL's piano roll as well, they're just invisible. If you write in a key, it's got that key in it! You're not specifying it. You could argue that you could write outside of the key and just full out be a rebel, but that exists in sheet music too as accidentals!

Writing in sheet music and writing in piano roll isn't all that different, the process is more or less the same(you can't write in velocities in sheet music) as far as how it's supposed to be done. Saying that piano roll is better than sheet music because sheet music has to be interpreted is an . I do agree that learning the piano roll is a goodgreatfun idea, but that doesn't mean that sheet music has absolutely no place outside of live performances. When I have trouble trying to get a rhythm I have on my head into the piano roll, I usually write it down in sheet music to compare and contrast until I figure it out!

@swamp For pickups, make a copy of the pattern you want in the pickup with the pickup note written in(making it about 1 note longer) and shift the entire track 1 note to the right. For syncopation, write in syncopation as you would! Piano rolls don't say you have to adhere to certain demands, and you don't have to make a piano roll follow a distinct measure pattern every time. You can go over the measure if you want! For tuplets, again, just keep subdividing, and for grace notes, use really teeny-tiny notes(scaled as you wish).

[Nabeel Ansari]

As someone who has both musical training/lessons and someone who almost solely composes on FL, I can say that this is silly()!!! Time signature and key signature are both present in FL's piano roll as well, they're just invisible. If you write in a key, it's got that key in it! You're not specifying it. You could argue that you could write outside of the key and just full out be a rebel, but that exists in sheet music too as accidentals!

I'm talking about computers, not us. They don't read a key signature and go "it's in C Major". They react based on events and what values they are given. MIDI is just data, there's no structure like a time signature or key signature when you get to the low level of what's receiving the data because computers don't think, they don't need to comprehend structure.

@swamptherion - To modify note lengths and positioning outside of the standard 16 beat measure, find the snap setting in your DAW and change it to your liking. At FL, it's at the top of the screen in the midde (set to Line at default). In FL, if you set it to none, you have COMPLETE FREEDOM by the MILLISECOND to the positioning/length of your notes. Be cautious and place notes carefully, because timing could get a little sloppy real soon if you're not paying attention to your notes.

[swamptherion]

Thank you all for replying and trying to help me out. I'll just play around with FL's piano roll and try to get used to it.

Could someone please tell how to write this two passages in a piano roll? ..that would be a good start...

and

(first passage is in 3/4 and second one in 3/8 )

Thanks, mates

[Nabeel Ansari]

Thank you all for replying and trying to help me out. I'll just play around with FL's piano roll and try to get used to it.

Could someone please tell how to write this two passages in a piano roll? ..that would be a good start...

and

(first passage is in 3/4 and second one in 3/8 )

Thanks, mates

While I can't read sheet music, I can give you some advice on help translating it. You've probably already been given this, but I'm going to give you basic piano roll 101. I'm going to talk assuming you've never seen a piano before, you probably have (I KNOW you have) so just stick with the explanation until the end (where I'll explain time sigs in FL).

So in pianos you have your white notes (all naturals) and your black (sharps/flats). Basically in sheet music whatever note it is you put it on the corresponding key in the piano (C white key is to the left of the pair of black keys).

That's notes. Pretty basic.

Rhythm is a little different, though. In the piano roll, a note's POSITION indicates WHEN it is played and how (literally) long it is determines the duration. You don't draw anything for rests (because a computer "rests" when it's not receiving a NOTE ON, and when it's not NOTE ON it's NOTE OFF), for rests you just need blank space.

In the piano roll you'll see vertical lines, some are thicker (every four small squares) and some are even thicker (every 16). Those are either beats or measures.

Every four small squares you have a thick line, that shows the beat (and that's what the tempo will click at if you have metronome enabled). Those small squares are sixteenth notes (you can change the snap like I mentioned somewhere in this thread).

I'm sure you've figured out that a quarter note stretches four squares, an eighth note stretches two, and a sixteenth stretches one. As far as slurs go, you need to have either a synth set to "mono" (only one note at a time) or a virtual instrument capable of legato play. In which case it's kinda simple to draw it in the piano roll, you just have the note's duration bleed into the start of the next, which will trigger the virtual instrument to play it like it would play a slur. Although some virtual instruments don't use legato play for slur and just use it for regular one note to the next (in which case you're not in luck).

IMAGE EXAMPLE

The thing is you have to think of a piano roll not as how the music is written but as instructions for the virtual instrument to act on.

As far as time signature goes, here:

IMAGE EXAMPLE

Again, the grid will change to match your selections.

If I'm unclear you can catch me on skype: neblixsaber and I can just show you stuff.

[Moseph]

Could someone please tell how to write this two passages in a piano roll? ..that would be a good start...

(Grid is set to 16th-note triplets)

(first passage is in 3/4 and second one in 3/8 )

(Grid is set to 16th-notes)

In general, if you're unsure of how a given note duration should look in the piano roll, you can set the grid value to that duration to check it. Most DAWs have some sort of step record, too.

[Nabeel Ansari]

(Grid is set to 16th-note triplets)

(Grid is set to 16th-notes)

In general, if you're unsure of how a given note duration should look in the piano roll, you can set the grid value to that duration to check it. Most DAWs have some sort of step record, too.

I never knew that this sort of stuff looked THAT complicated in sheet music... 0_o'

[swamptherion]

neblix, great mini-tutorial! Thanks for taking your time.

In general, if you're unsure of how a given note duration should look in the piano roll, you can set the grid value to that duration to check it. Most DAWs have some sort of step record, too.

Ah, perfect, that was one of my main questions! So, if I'm writing sixteenth and eighth notes the notes will all fit exactly in a certain number of squares, and then if I need to write some triplets, I just change the grid so that tuplets fit to it, right? ..and when I change the grid back to sixteenth notes, the triplets I wrote will look out of place in the grid, like in the middle of two squares, right?

I never knew that this sort of stuff looked THAT complicated in sheet music... 0_o'

Me neither... although I think he got some of the durations wrong, but the idea is there.

One last couple of questions: those yellow vertical lines at the bottom, what are they? and, in a piano roll, velocity is the same or similar to tempo/bpm in standard notation?, those two passages would be in 127bpm?

[Moseph]

neblix, great mini-tutorial! Thanks for taking your time.

Ah, perfect, that was one of my main questions! So, if I'm writing sixteenth and eighth notes the notes will all fit exactly in a certain number of squares, and then if I need to write some triplets, I just change the grid so that tuplets fit to it, right? ..and when I change the grid back to sixteenth notes, the triplets I wrote will look out of place in the grid, like in the middle of two squares, right?

Right. You can also set your pencil tool to draw notes of, say, triplet length, but they won't snap into the correct position unless you also have the grid set correctly. If you're using step record, the grid doesn't matter, and you just set duration then play the note. It's similar to Finale's Speedy Entry.

Me neither... although I think he got some of the durations wrong, but the idea is there.

One last couple of questions: those yellow vertical lines at the bottom, what are they? and, in a piano roll, velocity is the same or similar to tempo/bpm in standard notation?, those two passages would be in 127bpm?

No, all the durations are correct.

The vertical lines are note velocity, which is how loud the note is played. With MIDI, this is a value from 0 to 127. All the notes in the examples are 90-ish -- if I were making an actual performance, the velocities would vary according to how loud I wanted each note to be.

Tempo is different from velocity and is set either in the transport box (where the playback controls are) if you aren't automating it or (depending on how the specific DAW handles it) possibly in a separate window where the tempo can be automated so it changes over time.

[Nabeel Ansari]

Look in FL in a new project and it should say 140 around where the Play button is (or 130, depends) and that's your BPM. Hold down the mouse button on it and go up or down to change the tempo to any value you want.

The vertical lines are velocity. The value when given to a sampler or synthesizer will correspond to how loud the sound that is played back will be. Never go completely 100% in the piano roll unless the virtual instrument you use has specific samples given when you raise the value to that level (example: the Monster Staccatos string library will give really STRONG string staccatos when I raise it that high and softer ones when I lower the value, but only more commercial libraries have velocity sensitive samples), use the volume knobs on your virtual instruments to handle overall volume of the instrument itself. That's more a mixing & mastering thing, so I'll leave it at that.

[Moseph]

And for reference, my screen captures are from Sonar 8.5.

[swamptherion]

No, all the durations are correct.

What I meant was: for example, in the first passage, shouldn't the half note "touch" the quarter note? -third beat immediately after the second beat, same with those two A#.

Not as if they were tied together, just one note played right after the other... you got it right in the second passage with those G# and A in the bass.

Thanks to both of you for explaining velocity to me, it's clear now.

[Moseph]

What I meant was: for example, in the first passage, shouldn't the half note "touch" the quarter note? -third beat immediately after the second beat, same with those two A#.

Not as if they were tied together, just one note played right after the other... you got it right in the second passage with those G# and A in the bass.

Technically, yes, they should touch if you want an absolutely accurate transcription, but Sonar doesn't round the corners of notes -- adjacent notes look like one long note -- so I shortened the duration slightly just to make it clear that it was two notes.

In constructing a performance, you don't really want all your notes to be perfect anyway -- you'd have to release the piano key to restrike it, for example. Remember that when you're dealing with the piano roll, it's best to think of it as creating a performance and not as notating a piece that someone else will perform for you a la Finale.